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I started off my day with no particular motive. I booked myself into New Joes Hostel just off Khao San Road. There were no single rooms so I had to settle for a double, although by the size of the bed it was more like a quadruple as it was mahoosive!
After I got sorted I went out for a stroll, it didn't take to long for some Thai guy to start chatting me up. But alas he was not trying to sell me anything as it was his day off. He said he would like to practice his English as we walked, which I thought was fair enough. From him I learnt that his name was Teelo-Pin, he is 50 years old, has a wife and 3 children, he originates from Chiang Mai in the North, he works in car insurance and he supports Shitnal...I mean Arsenal.
Before long we had trekked a fair old way & didn't really have the foggiest as to where I was. All I knew was that the area had stopped looking touristy & eyes had started to burn holes in me again. At this point a few things were running through my
head, mostly thoughts along the lines of 'RUN!'. But as it happens I could tell that the guy was just a genuinly nice chap and came across as no threat. We stopped off at a newsagents and got a couple of beers & sat outside on a porch drinking them like gangsters. Then he got the fish skins in which was all totally new to me. They were dried and kind of tasted like quavers...fishy quavers to be precise, quite nice actually!
As soon as the beers were history I decided to make tracks, Teelo-Pin said he knew a shortcut back to Khao San. Once again I had some mild thoughts of legging it. But judgement definately told me by now that the old boy meant no harm so I went along with the plan. I ended up seeing a part of Bangkok that probably not to many other westerners have seen. Once again I felt like the curious object of most onlookers attention. Teelo-Pin even said 'Not to many like you come here', to which I replied 'your not wrong'.
It got espcially weird though when we stopped off at some shack on the sidewalk & got
Thai Tiger
This tiger ran across the rooftop just outside my room.a bite to eat. Most menu's I've seen so far in Bangkok have been in both Thai & English, this was purely Thai. I let Teelo-Pin order as I didn't really have a clue. All the time the lady was serving us she wouldn't stop looking at me, I wouldn't take it for gospel but I think that she may have wanted to eat me!
When the food was served some old guy with one eye came & sat down opposite me & also kept looking at me .... with his eye, this made things a little weirder. But as a whole the food was rather nice, even though I wasn't 100% on what it was that I was eating.
We was given four bowls, one sticky rice, one pork, one herbs and one mystery meat. All of which looked quite appetizing apart from the raw garlic cloves which I just couldn't touch and the mystery meat. It was the visable contents of the mystery meat dish that bothered me, it looked suspicious ... like a smashed up bollock or something. So I gave that a wide berth and opted for the pork and the majority of the
herbs.
The only other thing that tried to put me off my meal was a Manchester United team poster from 1994 to my left. But I learnt that if i didn't look to my left I didn't feel the desire to be violently sick into the bowl of smashed bollocks.
After we had eaten Teelo-pin showed me the way out of the sector & I said fairwell to him, the guy was a leg-end! It was a strange and unexpected afternoon but a welcome one where I basically learnt what your average Thai gets up to on his day off.
I wonderd what tomorrow could possibly bring, I may well book a trip to the Phi Phi Islands.
Godspeed.
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jewbo23
non-member comment
cat
That cat looks like my cat. I havent seen her in a good 20 minutes come to think of it.